


KM4596

by lepusarcticus



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, On the Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 07:48:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14930162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lepusarcticus/pseuds/lepusarcticus
Summary: prompt no.36 for the tumblr xfpornbattle.





	KM4596

Home was lost, and everywhere, and it was here, too, in the rust-specked tangerine hull of the Datsun. It was all there in the backseat, everything; guns swaddled in Salvation army flannel, extra shoes, a rest stop paperback bookmarked with a magpie’s iridescent feather. A stash of fake IDs and new plates in a lock box. Where a car seat might have been, there was a sawed-off cardboard box of under-ripe peaches they’d haggled out of a roadside vendor. 

After so much time apart, he wouldn’t let her out of his sight, and he drove with one hand on her knee and the other wrist draped over the crest of the steering wheel. They avoided motels when they could, and slept in zipped-together sleeping bags on a roll of camper’s foam in the bed of the truck, sometimes rutting quietly under the spilled-sugar stars. 

- 

Her close-cropped hair was the colour of lemonade, a 6-dollar box-dye job tackled in a gas station bathroom somewhere in Nebraska. Her cheeks were scattered with fresh, rose-coloured freckles. She’d stopped bothering to cover her mole. She should have looked different, he thought, but she was as familiar as ever, and he wondered if under his gray-flecked beard she saw in him the same man she’d followed. 

He couldn’t remember the last time they’d called each other by their names. 

For years, they’d been yanked forth from trial to tribulation, and it was good to decide their own trajectory for once. They wore the tragedy of their lives like a cloak they’d woven themselves, and it kept them huddled together, kept them warm and alive. 

-

In nowhere, Oklahoma, the Datsun blew a tire. 

The cracked road was lined with raspberry bushes, and Scully reached back and emptied out the remaining peaches into a nest of dirty clothes, balanced the box on her hip, and vaulted out of the passenger seat, ignoring the plum-dark billow of clouds overhead. 

-

The skies opened. Mulder stopped struggling with the hubcap to wipe the sweat from his brow and tilt his face to the sky, humbly receiving the blessing of it. The asphalt beneath his knees was still warm from the morning sun. 

He cast his gaze around, anxious to anchor himself to the sight of her, and discovered her barefoot in the middle of the road. Her face was lifted, eyes closed in quiet joy. The rain bled through her white tank, clinging to the dip of her back, and the dark stain of her tattoo was faintly visible through the wet cotton. The cardboard box lay crumpled and ruined beside her, raspberries spilling into the road. 

Mulder unfolded from his crouch and went to her, wrapping his arms around her from behind, soaking the front of his shirt as he held her close. She didn’t startle, but rested her forearms on his, leaned back, rolled her head along his collarbone. Her face was serene and thoughtful, flushed from the wind. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “You look crazy,” he added, kissing a favourite spot behind her ear, “but goddamn, are you ever beautiful. Get back in the truck, honey, you’re gonna catch a cold. I’m almost done.” 

“The cardboard got wet,” she said. “I gave up on the raspberries.” 

“S’okay. We’ve still got the peaches,” he promised, rocking her a little. Her skin under his lips was cool and damp, but there was an aching warmth pooling in his chest. 

A bright thread of lightning flashed near the horizon, followed by a deep roll of thunder. “Let’s stay out here,” she breathed. 

“I needed a shower anyway,” he agreed, and she smiled sadly, closing her eyes. 

The rain picked up, and he imagined that she was the one calling down the water. 

-

Against the nose of the truck, his hand slid under the hem of her tank, catching on the soaked, rippled fabric, encountering a landscape of goosebumps. Her hot, raspberry scented breath, her belly rising and falling against his. Her eyes storm-bright and rich with lust. She was still so soft, shibori-striped with the evidence that they’d created life. 

“Take me,” she begged, panting into his mouth. 

-

Her breasts hung soft and low, the skin chilled, her nipples tight and stippled with raindrops. He pushed her back and bent to pull one dark areola into his mouth. She tasted of salt and silver, and she gasped tearfully as he took her between his teeth and rolled his tongue, plucking at the button of her cutoffs with one hand. 

“ _Mul–_ ,” she began, but before she could say his name, he drew his other hand up to her mouth, seeking entrance, slipping three fingers against her pillowy tongue, pressing it down. She suckled obediently, drinking the dirt from him, sending darts of heat into his cock. He released her nipple and shook his head quickly, gathering her close, pressing his erection into the blade of her hipbone. 

“ _Don’t say it,_ ” he rasped against her cheek, desperate. “ _Please._ ” He slid his fingers from her mouth to her neck, replacing them with his tongue, kissing her with feral intent. She moaned her apology against him, peeling his waterlogged t-shirt over his head. It joined her tank and bra in a flash of white on the road. Rain beat into his naked back in a maddening, chaotic polyrhythm. 

He gripped her by the slippery planes of her ribs and lifted her easily to sit on the hood. Together, they worked her cutoffs over her hips, and she slung her thighs around him impatiently, tugging him forward with her heels, reaching for his fly. 

God, he would die for her, he would kill for her. He would do it all again. When he pushed into her, she was hotter than blood. 

-

Forehead to forehead, moving together. 

“ _Come inside me,_ ” she sobbed as he shoved his hips hard into hers, and she was almost inaudible in the crash of water on the road. “ _I need it. God, I need it, you have to, please–_ ” she clenched around him. He would give her anything. 

Rain sluicing between them, thunder roaring over them, earth spinning beneath them. The soak of life all around them, the scent of green. All of it, everything–she was the only thing that had ever been real. 

-

“Let’s try to get a room tonight,” she said, drying her hair with a spare shirt from the backseat. She was drowning in one of his newer Wal-Mart sweatshirts, was shirtless underneath. 

He listened to the hollow drum of rain on the roof of the Datsun, the light squeal of the windshield wipers as they flung themselves against the downpour. 

He put his hand on her knee, and drove. 

-

_When we are driving in the dark,_  
on the long road to Provincetown,  
when we are weary,  
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,  
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.  
I imagine us seeing everything from another place–  
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless  
fields of the sea.  
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,  
but which we cherish.  
And what we see is our life moving like that  
along the dark edges of everything,  
headlights sweeping the blackness,  
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.  
Looking out for sorrow,  
slowing down for happiness,  
making all the right turns  
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,  
the swirling waves,  
the narrow streets, the houses,  
the past, the future,  
the doorway that belongs  
to you and me.

_\- Coming Home, Mary Oliver_

 


End file.
